Rebranding 4i

23 June 2017 &dash; 4 min read

It’s been 3 years since our last rebrand, and it became really clear that we’re just not the same company we used to be. We’ve grown. We’re leaner, faster and more agile. And, we’ve gone from servicing a handful of local clients to boasting a plethora of exciting international projects! It was time for a brand refresh – one that would accurately reflect who we are today and give shape to where we’re headed. This is our story.

Step 1: Choosing a creative agency

The first step was to choose a creative agency that would do justice to the brief. Not an easy task! Not because there are no good agencies – there are plenty. It’s just not an easy thing to hand over your baby to someone else to decide what she’s going to look like, how she’s going to speak and dress. A rebranding exercise therefore, is not a cheap one – and for good reason! So after much deliberation, we decided to let our team of in-house designers and creative have a go.

Step 2: Unpacking the brief

Even though the rebrand was going to be handled in house, we still needed to treat it like any other project – where the stakeholders were the “clients”, responsible for providing a clear and comprehensive brief. And just as important, the team undertaking the work needed to treat the project with the same care, interest and investment as any other project, and pitch ideas in a professional format and manner.

Step 3: The process

The first thing we did was to look at the history of the brand and the journey that the business has been on. As part of the brief, we mapped out everything that’s different about who we are now versus who we were 3 years ago. From this we created a word list that we wanted the brand to reflect. We decided on 4 core values that represent us as a business and mapped each to a colour.

These 4 colours were matched to each of the words on our word list, which helped to define the use of each colour in order of priority.

After a few rounds of pitching, we presented 3 options to the stakeholders, all with a reason, a story and visual flows to represent how each one would look and be applied across a number of different touch points.

Step 4: The launch

Once the final brand option was decided and signed off, the team got to work planning the internal launch to the team. The presentation was really well received at the internal launch, which gave us even more confidence as we prepared a long list of requirements for the external launch. A big part of successfully launching a brand is having a well thought out plan to make sure that each and every touch point – particularly digital, goes live / gets updated at the same time (as far as possible). It’s a good idea to have a predetermined priority list, as, for example, the website needs to go live before the press release, and the press release needs to be live before the mail campaign can happen. Our marketing team had clearly laid out plan with tick boxes and checklists to make sure the brand launched without a hitch.

Step 4: The rollout

Once the core elements of the rebrand launch were live, our team got to work chipping away at a long list of office spaces, documents and printed material that still needs to be updated. It has been a delight to witness the brand come to life, and we’re looking forward to seeing the uptake and impact over the coming months.